Denied: The Health Care Crisis in America

About the Project

Denied: The Health Care Crisis in America is a feature length documentary about the systemic breakdown of America's health care system. The film examines the struggles of both individuals and institutions to wrestle with the crisis and find solutions. Award-winning filmmaker Julie Winokur artfully weaves her own health insurance battle into this harrowing look at the hazards of having one-sixth of our population living without health coverage.

In Denied, we meet Sheila Wessenberg, a mother of two, whose breast cancer metastasizes when she can no longer afford chemotherapy; North Carolina mill worker, Carl Garrett, whose company tries to outsource his medical treatment to India; and EMT first-responders from the Los Angeles Fire Department who are running virtual mobile clinics in the wake of numerous hospital closings.

Denied uses a powerful mix of narrative storytelling and reportage. It alternates between intimate first-person accounts, archival footage and interviews with experts and policy makers, bringing us from the lofty abstractions of health policy and zooming in to the human scale of real life outcomes.